Two years in the making
by FourandeightStars
Summary: It is now two years since Kyoko first got her heart broken and joined LME. Kyoko are starring in her first movie and her relationship with Ren is extremely complicated. This story follows the main story until chapter 269, the rest is pure fan-fiction.


**This story takes place 2 years after the beginning of the main story. It will follow the ****canon**** up until 269 (that is the latest chapter available to me), the rest is made up :-)**

**I do not own the Skip Beat story.**

**-**

"I cannot believe that it has been a full two years since the LME audition." Moko said, while eyeing the dessert that Kyoko had brought to her new place. "I told you that should not bring any cake."

"But we are celebrating - and also you told me not to buy any cake, I made this one." Kyoko said, it was all about finding loopholes if you wanted to eat sweets with Moko.

"Really?" Kanae eyed the cake that looked as if it was bought at a very expensive shop, with a clear red glace covering the entire thing and chocolate roses and leafs on top. _I guess I can eat a little less dinner._

"Oh, before I forget..!" Kyoko quickly went out to the hallway and got four small candles made for putting on top of a cake. "One for each thing we are celebrating today."

"One for our two year anniversary." She put the pink Love-me-uniform coloured candle on to the cake.

"One for your new american movie." This time it was a dark green candle resembling the main outfit of Kanaes character in the movie.

"One for your new apartment." This candle was bronze just as the number 91 and Kanaes nameplate on the front door. _Wait this is supposed to be the first time she is here right?_ Kanae thought surprised.

"One for my first role in a movie." Kyoko said, lighting a candle that started as white turning more and more black further down.

"And it is your first lead role as well, don't forget that!" Kanae said while considering how much time Kyoko must have spend on finding these candles.

"That is true. Should we blow the candles out together." Kyoko said hopefully.

"No."

"But why not?"

"Too embarrassing!" Kanae said, thinking about how lame it would look with the two of them blowing out candles together. "You blow them out, you made the cake!"

"Fine.." Kyoko said blowing out the candles herself.

"So tell me a bit more about this movie. It seems quite dark from what I have understood." Kanae watched Kyoko cut them two pieces of the cake, it looked delicious on the inside as the chocolate core bled out on the plate.

"Yes it sort of similar to the Prisoner PV I did for Fuwa Sho. It starts off with a normal happy slightly ambitious high school girl who has just entered her last year in high school preparing to study medicine. Then she meet this older guy, who she just gets crazy in love with until the point where she is completely corrupted and loses herself in her attempt to win him over."

"That sounds a bit like annoying." Kanae said without thinking. Kyoko nodded.

"Yes, but the end makes the whole thing come together, but I am not allowed to disclose that."

Kyoko originally also wanted to turn down this part, mostly because it hit a little bit too close to home. However, once she had heard that it was actually a biography about the famous business woman Haruko Takahashi, and that she herself had requested for Kyoko to play her young self, she got excited and accepted right away. The crew wanted the biography part to be a secret so the entire staff had to sign an NDA, and there was pretty heavy fines involved with spoiling this.

"Interesting, well I look forward to seeing you in it. You are playing with Tsuruga-san right?" Kanae asked, while she started on her second piece of cake. "Is he playing the love interest?"

"No, that is Taira Murasame - Tsuruga-san is playing a different but equally important role." Kyoko said, without wanting to spoil too much of the plot. When they had done the first read through it had been kind of weird, as it was only a few weeks after it had been leaked (on purpose) that it was Ren who played BJ. Before that they had met with the entire cast telling them the truth and apologised for tricking them. Everyone but Murasame has seemed to be okay with it by the time they left. The director said that he would have a second talk with him to smooth things over, since it was his idea in the first place, but the atmosphere between the three of them had still been weird.

"How is it going with you and Tsuruga anyways?" Kanae asked. Just before she had left for America, the situation had been very chaotic with the tabloids saying that Ren was together with some attention crazy actress. This seemed to had caused a rift between the two of them, and Kyoko had finally told her about her feelings for Ren, something that had been obvious to Kanae for some time at that point. However, it seemed that they made up shortly after she left, and know she could not really get a grip of their relationship.

"Well…" Kyoko blushed "we are friends..."

"That cannot possibly be all with that reaction!"

"Well… yes and no, we have talked a lot and cleared many things but as it is now we are just friends." Kyoko said more to her cake than to Kanae.

"You are being very vague it is annoying. You must know that he is in love with you by now." Kanae said, the time in America had made her a bit more frank, she just was just about to regret her words, when Kyoko, blushing like crazy, nodded slightly.

"So you do know… then what is it, are you not in love with him anyone?" This seemed highly unlikely and Kyoko also immediately shook her head.

"No I am, very much so, it is just.." Kyoko stammered.

"It is just what? I am getting wrinkles listening to this! You know we are friends right? You can tell me." Kanae had had her doubts about Ren, but she still wanted to know what was going on, so she could finally asses his worth when he was acting as a full on boyfriend.

"There are some parts I cannot share in detail. It turns out that I have met him when I was young and before he was Tsuruga Ren, when I found out how he was feeling, I also learned that he had been keeping this secret from me…"

"What - wait, why?" It burst out of Kanae this was not at all what she had expected.

Kyoko looked a little lost in thought before she answered with carefully selected words: "I think he had some issues, that made him unable to share this information about his past. Also when he first got to know me, again, then it had been so long and I had changed a lot."

"Still that is a long time to keep something from someone." Kanae said deep in thought, she wondered who Tsuruga Ren was before, but it seemed like something she should not ask about.

"Yes, but I also had a secret I kept from him, a couple of times I used the Bo costume to help him out in secret…"

"That chicken mascot?!" This sounded ridiculous to Kanae, why would a man like Tsuruga Ren seek comfort with a chicken? _He must be a weirdo.._

"Yes. I know it sounds a bit odd" Kyoko nooded.

"A lot, but I believe you. However, it does not seem as bad as what he did, was he mad at you?"

"No he was not, he was shocked, but also a bit impressed that I could fool him with my acting." Kyoko said, and Kanae could hint a small note of pride when she said that.

"Then why aren't you guy together?" Kyoko looked a bit sad at this question.

"It was just too much, I needed time to process everything, and once I finally got used to our shared past, then that changed a lot for me and how I viewed him. Not in a bad way just in a new way, and I wanted to get to know him in this setting before saying anything."

Kanae looked at Kyoko surprised by the maturity of what she was saying. Then something slowly occurred to her.

"Wait a minute. You guys made up in what June? It is mid February now! It has been more than half a year!" Kanae almost yelled: "And you have still not told him? Like he has no idea how you feel?"

Kyoko put both her hand on her face and bend down towards har legs. "I have wanted to tell him for some time now, but I just do not know how." Her voiced sounded all muffled because of her hands.

"That is so stupid! You know that you stringing along the most eligible bachelor in Japan?"

Koyko nodded and suddenly looked sad: "I am worried that he might have lost interest in me, for the past month we have not been in contact as much, and I feel so stupid for not being able to say anything."

"Well it is very stupid, and to be honest I would not blame him if he wanted to move on after so long, but I do not think that is the case yet. You are meeting him tonight for the birthday dinner right?" Kanae looked at her friend.

"Yes." Kyoko had promised to cook a birthday dinner for Ren, as he had been out for a shoot in Sapporo for the past ten days, and just got back this morning. "But I want to hear more about your movie premiere coming!" Kyoko said feeling that they had talked enough about her.

"Nope, you are changing the topic. We almost only talked about my movie and acting school in all the skype calls from America, now I want to talk about what is going on with you and how you can clear things up!" Kanae said stubbornly.

"Okay." Kyoko said kind of excited, thinking that this was sort of how she saw girl friends in the movies. "What should we do?"

It was silent for a while. Kanae was hitting herself internally, because she suggested helping without actually knowing anything herself, she had always been too busy to date, and she had not met any interesting men yet.

"You don't know?" Kyoko asked slightly disappointed.

"That doesn't matter, we will use someone even more knowledgeable - mister Google!" Kanae pulled up her phone and googled 'how to tell a man that you like him'.

"There is a wikihow for this!" She said, slightly surprised. Kanae skimmed the page so quickly that Kyoko could not follow.

"Okay, some it sound very stupid, but they do write some different stuff about showing your feelings, that might be easier than telling him?"

Kyoko thought for a bit, it did sound easier to show him rather than say it out loud.

"I think you are right, I want to tell him as well, but this might be a good start." Kyoko said.

"Okay, the first thing you need to do is.."

\- **At Rens apartment -**-

It had been a long 10 days, the shoot in Sapporo had been delayed from day one, and Ren had been working almost non-stop to make sure he got back for his birthday dinner with Kyoko. After being done with unpacking he sat on the couch to relax for a little while before he would go take a shower and prepare for Kyoko's arrival. She had existed on buying the food, leaving him with very little preparing to do.

He looked forward to seeing Kyoko, he really did, but at the same time it had started to get painful as well. It had been more than half a year since she learned about his feeling, yet he had received neither a rejection or reciprocation. He understood that she needed time when she learned who he was, and in many ways he enjoyed how this knowledge had changed their relationship into a more equal one - into a friendship. But he was worried that this was all that it had become - a friendship.

Once in while he would catch her blushing or she would give a reaction that would lead him to think she might feel the same. However, he did not understand why she would not just tell him, his feelings had been made very clear last summer. A part of him feared that she might be attracted to him as a man, without having any feelings of love beyond friendship. Of course it was nice knowing that she was attracted to him, and in his darkest moments a voice inside him told him to at least make use of that, but in his heart he knew that it wasn't enough.

The sound of his phone distracted him from his thoughts, it was a message from Kyoko:

'I will be there around 16.30 to start cooking.'

A casual message as expected. Then there was a second buzz.

'I look very much forward to seeing you.'

_This is new_ he thought looking at his phone. The word 'very' had been turned into some big shiny word art. This was not super unusual, after learning that he is her childhood fairy prince the amount of word art, emojis and gifs in her texts had gone up tremendously. However, the context seemed different from what she usually texted.

_Maybe it is because she has seen Kotonami-san for the first time this year, and she is in a very good mood_

Re replied her '16:30 sounds good. I look very much forward to seeing you too.'

The time until 16.30 went with taking a relaxing bath, calling Yashiro to confirm his schedule and wrapping the souvenir he had brought for Kyoko in Sapporo.

The doorbell rang the second the clock switched from 29 to 30, and while walking to open Ren considered whether Kyoko waited on the other side to be that accurate.

He opened the door and there she was, looking slightly dressed up, in a sheer light blue dress under her jacket. However, before he could say anything a big bang sounded and he was covered in konfetti.

"Happy birthday Tsuruga-san!" It sounded behind the whirlwind of konfetti.

"T...thank you!" Ren stammered while removing some of the confetti from his face. "Come in."

Kyoko went inside the apartment kicking herself internally. It had not been on purpose to set of the confetti cannon, but after all the preparation with Kanae the sight of Ren had her heart leaping into her throat and she accidentally set it of - in his face…

"I am sorry to have set it of in your face, that was not on purpose!" Kyoko said while putting down the groceries she had brought.

"That it quite okay, actually it reminds me of how my dad used to wake me on my birthday." He said, while helping Kyoko taking of her jacket. _She did really wear a great dress underneath_ he thought.

Before he could go and hang her jacket, the next weird thing happened. He felt her arms wrap around him in a hug, surprised he said slightly flustered "what are you doing?"

Kyoko looked up at him "it is a delayed birthday hug!". _This is so embarrassing_ she thought, Moko had said that physical contact was high on the list, and recommended the birthday hug which was apparently something quite common in America.

"Oh.." Ren said at a loss for word, but he hugged her back. _Maybe this is something Kotonami-san picked up in the US?_ He thought.

After a little while they awkwardly let go of one another, and Ren watched as Kyoko left for the kitchen. Since when had he started to become this stiff? Back in the days he had no trouble seducing women, but now he was at a loss for what to do, just because her behavior changed slightly. He had to get himself together.

In the kitchen Kyoko had started to find the pot that she needed. Her face was deeply red, what was she thinking? There was no way that she could continue with the list. However, just as she had thought that she remembered Moko saying '_to be honest I would not blame him if he wanted to move on after so long_' and her resolve strengthen again.

"Are you wearing the earrings I got you?" Ren said having entered the kitchen.

"Yes!" Kyoko said a little too loud, she turned around to face him hoping that he would not notice how red her face was.

The earrings were silver with a green sapphire stone each, they were a present for her 18th birthday, and suited her very well. He had not told her that the stones were real, in fear of her rejecting the gift, and luckily she had not asked - it probably did not even cross her mind that they might be.

"They suit you really well, you look great today." Ren said, enjoying the clear flustered look on her face. It was much easier for him to be in control like this, confirming that at least some part of her was interested, even if it was only physical.

"You...you look really great too." Kyoko managed to stammer, Ren had moved closer to her, he had the look of the emperor of the night.

"I will make the food, you should go relax in the living room." Kyoko said in slight panic, she still had a hard time dealing with the emperor of the night.

Ren knowing that he should be careful stepped back into the living room. Something had changed in during the time he was in Sapporo, and he wondered if it was himself or her.

It was getting very hard for him to find the way to behave.

As he sat down he saw his phone ringing, with seven unanswered calls and nine texts. Only one person could be responsible for this. Reluctantly he picked up the phone.

"Reeeeen…. Where are you?" The woman sounded drunk.

"At home, Hana-san" He answered his drunk co-star.

"Pfft… you are no fun… I miss you…"

"I have company, why have you called me?" Ren was really tired of this woman, but she had realised his feeling for Kyoko a couple of months ago, and had threatened to leak the story. Not that he was embarrassed to share this with the public, but he was worried if that would rush things in a bad way between them.

"Oh.. is it that girl? Kyoko… right?" Pause for a hiccup "You do know.. that I am voted the fourth most beautiful woman in Japan right? - that plan little girl is not even on list."

"That is not really of interest to me." He answered, leaving the livingroom to find a place out of earshot.

"Is it because she is so… young? Innocent? … to be honest I expected more from you, to be beyond that... male stereotype." This was not the first time she had said these words.

"It is not. You know I do not have to take this." He said biting his teeth, her way of speaking about Kyoko, and the nature his feelings for her made him extremely angry.

"Ooh… but you do… I know the sleaziest reporters, they would eat..her..up.."

"What do you want?" He sighed.

"I want you to pick me up…" She said.

"I cannot do that, as I said I have company."

"Find me at Florence's bar.." Hana said and hung up.

Ren looked as in phone in slight disbelief. Considering what he should do, he really wanted to ignore her, but he also could not let her leak his feelings.

In the kitchen Kyoko had just finished cutting all the ingredients. Her heart hurt, she was sure it had been a woman on the phone, this Hana-san, was probably his co-star from the movie he just finished shooting for, a movie with a very sensual plot. One day a couple of months ago she had made a surprise visit to the set, the scene they were filming was a hard-core makeout session. Kyoko had not been able to concentrate and ended up leaving the lunchbox she had brought with a small note. That woman was so beautiful, older and she was calling him outside of work.

_It is probably just about work_ Kyoko thought to herself.

"Morgami-san.." The sound of Ren's voice startled her, she had not heard him enter the kitchen.

"I am so sorry, there is a work emergency and I will have to go." Ren said, deeply sad that he was giving in to blackmail.

"Okay, is everything okay?" Kyoko said. _Maybe it is a real work emergency_.

"It will be. I am sorry you got all this food for us, maybe we can use it another night?" Ren said hopefully.

"Oh, you are not coming back?" Kyoko said disappointed, she thought he would only leave for a little while.

"Yes, but I do not know how long it will take, it will be rude of me to keep you here." He said.

"I will be fine.." Kyoko said hesitant.

"No, I will feel bad wasting your time. I already ordered you a cap, it will be here in 15 minutes."

Disappointed Kyoko helped pack up the chopped vegetables. They agreed to meet in two days so the food would not spoil. The atmosphere was quite heavy, and Kyoko started to really worry if she was too late. She felt so much like a complete fool, she did not even have time to give him his present.

"Let me walk you to the cap." Ren insisted.

"No, it is okay, you need to hurry as well." Kyoko said, and a crazy thought popped into her head. _I need to do something now!_

She stood on her toes and pulled the collar of Ren's jacket downwards just enough to reach his cheek with her lips.

"Happy birthday, Tsuruga-san" She said, before leaving for the taxi.


End file.
